“Ziggy Stardust” by David Bowie

"Ziggy Stardust" is the centerpiece of David Bowie's fifth album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, released on RCA in 1972. Bowie cut it at Trident Studios in London in November 1971 with the Spiders themselves, Mick Ronson on electric guitar, Trevor Bolder on bass and Mick Woodmansey on drums and shakers, while Bowie strummed a 12-string and co-produced with Ken Scott.

The song tells the whole story in miniature: Ziggy, a bisexual alien rock star who arrives as a messenger for beings from somewhere out past the stars, climbs to glory and tumbles back down like any flesh-and-blood idol. Bowie stitched the character together partly from the English singer Vince Taylor, the Legendary Stardust Cowboy and Kansai Yamamoto. And the whole thing swings off one of Ronson's guitar riffs, a glam rock snarl that struts and sneers and then turns strangely tender.

Bowie's studio version was never a single, though a live take from 1972 surfaced as a French single in 1994. Rolling Stone placed it at number 282 on its list of the 500 greatest songs in 2010, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame counts it among the songs that shaped rock and roll. Bowie kept singing it on the Ziggy Stardust and 1978 Stage tours, and again decades later.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.